Not even 24 hours after NBC broke the news of Rahm Emanuel’s departure, President Barack Obama opened this morning’s announcement with, “Good morning and welcome to the least suspenseful announcement of all time.”

The President came to praise his former Chief of Staff through his efforts on health care reform and leading the White House’s staff through these turbulent times. “We’re also losing a comparable elader of our staff and one who we’re going to miss very much,” the President said. “When I first started assembling this administration I knew we were going to face some of the most difficult years our country has seen in years.”

Read more…

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President Obama’s charity basketball game brought out the best in the Beltway boys giving their all when it comes to sports reporting.

Basic round-ups from New York Post, Huffington Post’s The Hill and Time’s The Newsfeed flesh out the all-star pickup game at Fort McNair while USA Today pointed out the shrimp came straight from the Gulf.

Fishbowl DC replays the White House pool report for the top bill of the guest list:

Carmelo Anthony, Shane Battier, Chauncey Billups, Kobe Bryant (not playing), Derek Fisher, Grant Hill, LeBron James, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Maya Moore, Alonzo Mourning, Chris Paul, Derrick Rose, Bill Russell, Etan Thomas, Dwyane Wade, David West

Everyone notes Kobe didn’t play. But it was only Washington Post’s 44 that pointed out the above video of Obama’s insane three-point skill.

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Screencap from NY Daily News. Pete Souza/White House

For the 49th birthday of the President of the United States, you’d think it was the saddest day ever if you were the New York Daily News.

The Gotham tabloid started this piece about the President’s special day in true fashion: “It’s your party, Mr. President. You can cry if you want to.” It doesn’t hurt to run a file photo of the President staring at a plate of cupcakes like it was a handful of oil.

Back to the plate at hand: the photo (left) shares a strange similarity to when Helen Thomas celebrated her 89th birthday and received a plate of cupcakes from the President (and he’s smiling too!)

In fact, the photo is from last year while Obama “watches the flame on the candle as he walks to the Brady Briefing Room to present cupcakes to Hearst White House columnist Helen Thomas in honor of her birthday, Aug. 4, 2009.”

So if you thought the President was sad due to A-Rod’s 600th hit or his birth date still being debated, don’t fret. Even if he didn’t get to eat his cake from the AFL-CIO according to  Yahoo, we’re sure he’ll enjoy Wendy Williams’ Gift Bag and a birthday tweet (via Savannah Gutherie) from Russian President Dmitri Medvedev.

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President Obama will meet with the winner of Super Bowl XLV as early as next month. Sounds weird, right? But it’s actually true, since a pixelized president is in the latest edition of the Madden NFL 11 video game franchise released on August 10th.

Once you complete the season and your team wins the Super Bowl, the ending of the game involves President Obama’s jerky game avatar meeting with other bits of code and holding up a jersey.

Game Informer notes how weird the cameo looks in context with a game for die-hard sports fans. The complete video can be found on IGN. Of course this isn’t the first off-kilter cameo for President Obama: Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen presents Obama as a pacifist who eventually submits to the Decepticons referenced in an off-hand news clip and the third season premiere of The Boondocks which involved a Germany documentary filmmaker (voiced by actual filmmaker Werner Herzog) breaking down the hype of Obama’s 2008 campaign according to this Washington Post review.

It’s a shame though that an 8-bit Bill Clinton or George H.W. Bush never got to do this on the Nintendo, Genesis or Playstation.

Photo via Game Informer/IGN.

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Whether it’s happenstance or kismet that President Obama chose to speak an hour before Game 6 of the NBA Finals  for his first Oval Office speech on the Gulf oil spill remains to be seen. The president’s confidence in the Lake-show may falter tonight, but his message for BP and the coast likely won’t.

The New York Times makes the case that comparing the oil spill to the economy may not be far off, “Now the president must strike the same sort of balance in talking to the nation about the oil spill. And he has chosen to do so from the familiar office that Americans since the dawn of the television age have come to associate with big moments — for them, and for presidents.”
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In part two of our interview with White House Visitors Office Director Ellie Schafer, she tells us about learning the history of the White House, meeting guests like Captain Richard Phillips, who came for a tour and visit with the president after being freed from Somali pirates.



Ellie Schafer at the White House from whcinsider on Vimeo.

Ellie told us she has to “pinch herself” to remember she is really at the White House;  it’s been quite a trip for a woman who started out with President Obama in 2007, working on his advance.

Even a bad day is “still a pretty good day at the White House,” Ellie said.  And that’s easy to see — her office contains photos of her with First Lady Michelle Obama, with the President, and Nancy Reagan.  President Reagan and Ellie’s grandfather were racheros together: that’s some history!  Ellie brings a pretty impressive sports history to the Visitors office.  She played Mushball (it’s a Chicago thing), and her softball team won the league championship – they went all the way to the Gay Softball World Series!

Check out more photos here.

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Jay Leno premiered his new show last night on NBC and asks President Obama about owning a lot of cars, the ladies of The View, the future of his show, among other “hard-hitting” questions.

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The White House has long been known as “the People’s House” and President Barack Obama promised to make it an open, friendly and welcoming place. Over the last week, the hardest working staff at the White House hasn’t been the health care team … it’s been the Visitors Office. With only five staff members, they have ushered roughly 6,000 people a day through the White House gates with extended tour hours: 12-hour days instead of six. Every congressional office request was honored.

White House Correspondents Insider co-founder Tammy Haddad spoke with White House Visitors Office Director Ellie Schafer and her team for the inside scoop on what goes on behind the scenes at the only building in the world which is simultaneously the home of a head of state, the executive office of a head of state, and a museum open to the public.

The White House Visitors Office from whcinsider on Vimeo.

Schafer is testing out guided White House tours — which were dropped after 9/11. For the past eight years, visitors have walked through on their own, with Secret Service officers looking on. The Obama WH visitors team is getting kudos from White House veterans for allowing visitors into the always popular china room for the first time.

gtruong White House Staff Barack Obama, Ellie Schafer, Tammay Haddad

President Barack Obama awarded 16 Presidential Medals of Freedom, America’s highest medal awarded to civilians.  The recipients included Nancy Goodman Brinker, Pedro José Greer, Jr., Jack Kemp, Sen. Ted Kennedy, Stephen Hawking, Billie Jean King, Rev. Joseph Lowery, Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow, Harvey Milk, Sandra Day O’Connor, Sidney Poitier, Chita Rivera, Dr. Janet Davison Rowley, Mary Robinson, Desmond Tutu, and Muhammad Yunus.

Check out the full White House report HERE.

gtruong White House Feed Barack Obama, Billie Jean King, Chita Rivera, Desmond Tutu, Dr. Janet Davison Rowley, Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow, Harvey Milk, Jack Kemp, Jr., Mary Robinson, Muhammad Yunus, Nancy Goodman Brinker, Pedro José Greer, Rev. Joseph Lowery, Sandra Day OConnor, Sen. Ted Kennedy, Sidney Poitier, Stephen Hawking

The White House rolled out a new Web site that will share raw data from government agencies — Data.gov — which can be the foundation for new, user-generated apps. And WhiteHouse.gov is launching new tools to open government decision making to the public.

“The whole process is premised on the notion that people are smart and they have things to share. It’s an important step in creating opportunities for citizens to engage with the government and co-create policy,” said Obama’s Deputy Chief Technology Officer Beth Noveck.

Read the rest of the Washington Post article here.

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Charles Ommanney covering Obama in New Hampshire 1/6/2008

Award-winning Newsweek photojournalist Ommanney talked with Holly Fine about covering the White House.

The winner of this year’s Best Photo award from the White House News Photographers’ Association, Newsweek’s Charles Ommanney, talked with WHCInsider about covering President Obama during his public and private moments from the campaign to the Oval Office. Ommanney told WHCI contributor Holly Fine that while candidate Obama had occasionally denied him access, team Obama understands something the Bush staff did not: the power of images.

Holly Fine Some people say your photographs got Barack Obama elected.  How do you react to that?
Charles Ommanney Well my God that’s so funny! In a way, I suppose I could say that is an incredible compliment.  At the same time, it’s a very gray area in journalism. When you work very close to these people, you find yourself being in a bubble and you forget about the outside world.  You can wake up one day and you realize or question whether you are being objective, because it is hard to not like someone like Barack Obama.  In fact, it was actually hard once I got on the inside of the Bush campaign in 2000, it was hard not to like him. It’s kind of a gray area that we all go through, you ask anyone who spends time traveling with a presidential candidate.

HF Can you remember the exact moment when you said to yourself, I am photographing the face of the next president?
CO I think around Iowa, when the Iowa caucus was going on. The size of the crowd and again it all comes back to this sort of bubble that you live in.  We were hearing on the road that John McCain was getting 2,000 people, if he was lucky, in an audience and then you were going to gymnasiums in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids and having 20,000 people turn up and you start realizing that this is some kind of phenomenon going on here. You knew you were kind of living some sort of history.

HF How did he change in the campaign through your camera?
CO The candidate to a degree is shielded quite a lot by the force of people underneath him, working for him, doing everything.  I am not sure Barack Obama really changed during the campaign, if at all.  I think it would be extremely unusual if these huge crowds of adoring fans didn’t affect his ego.  But really, Barack Obama didn’t change that much.  The people that changed were the people around him. Read more…

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Tim Geithner and Jon Meacham from whcinsider on Vimeo.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner seems to have gotten used to the slings and arrows of Congress, but Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham stopped Secretary Geithner in his tracks when he asked him about being included as one of People magazine’s 100 Most Beautiful People under the heading of  ”Barack’s Beauties” along with First Lady Michelle Obama, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers, and assistant White House Chef Sam Kass.

Here is the transcript:



MR. MEACHAM: People magazine has selected you as one of “Barack’s Beauties.” Would you phrase it that you’re–you were in close consultation?  How does that feel?


SECRETARY GEITHNER:  It doesn’t–[laughing]–it doesn’t feel particularly good, frankly.

[Laughter.]
 It doesn’t make up for the challenge of being away from my family and doing other things, but you’re so nice to bring it up, Jon.



MR. MEACHAM:  Well, you’re welcome.

I’d like the record to show that I think Alexander Hamilton blushed as well at various points with various folks.





Jon Meacham, the newly crowned Pulitzer prize winner can get a little history into anything.


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Many previous presidents have turned to outside comedy pros to help liven up their speech to the White House Correspondents Dinner, but Newsweek is reporting that Barack Obama is relying as usual on his closest aides and staff.

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By tradition, the president is the guest of honor at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and the guest of honor addresses the audience of roughly 2,000 at some point during the evening.

It’s usually a light-hearted, often funny speech, very much in keeping with the chummy spirit of the occasion. But for the jokes to work, delivery is everything.

“I’d tell Barack Obama to treat the jokes, the whole thing, as seriously as the State of the Union speech,” Phil Rosenthal tells WHCInsider. “He should deliver it with the same gravity and seriousness.”

Rosenthal, the creator and executive producer of the hit comedy “Everyone Loves Raymond,” wrote material for all WHCDs that Bill Clinton attended as president and also directed “The Final Days,” the famous video of President Clinton at his last WHCD. Considered one of the funniest presidential comedy routines, the short spoof featured President Clinton riding a bike through the White House and later running to give First Lady Hillary Clinton her lunch before she went off to work in a limo. Read more…

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With a president who addresses the nation weekly via YouTube, can you really be surprised that the White House is now on Twitter? The account name is — surprise again — WhiteHouse, and it’s yet another way the Obama administration is trying to get its message out beyond the usual avenue of the White House press corps.

As of this moment, there are nearly 33,000 followers, including at least one White House correspondent — Jake Tapper of ABC News. The media at large have noticed with articles (Washington Post and USA Today, for instance). Doubtlessly more news organizations will as well.

The question: Is a Twittering White House a good thing? Let us know what you think in a comment.

And be sure to follow WHCInsider on Twitter, too!

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